One Year Later, Entrecard Going Strong

Written on November 8th, 2008 by Graham

Hey Everyone,
I have some really awesome news today. Entrecard is officially one year old. Today I can stand proudly in the face of everyone who said “this won’t work” or “this has been done before” or “this is just a traffic exchange” or “this is a fad”. Especially to all the people who said that Entrecard was dying. Here we are, a year later, growing as fast as ever, helping more bloggers than ever before.

Tens of thousands of bloggers use our service to advertise. Our one-day a la carte ad model, along with our virtual currency driven incentives are now responsible for 5 million visits per month to you -our members!

Helping bloggers succeed

Since day one, our mission has been to help bloggers succeed. But what is success to a blogger? You can define it many different ways, but if we’re here blogging, one thing is clear: we want people to hear us. We want an audience. We want people to read our blogs, to comment, and to subscribe. We at Entrecard have worked restlessly and relentlessly to further this goal. I am proud that Entrecard is delivering over 5 million visits to its members per month, in a combination of ad clicks and clicks from our site. That’s a big number, and it certainly means we’re helping you succeed, however you define it.

Meager begginings

Only a handful of people have been here since the beginning, and so few remember how we started. When we launched, there was no Entrecard blog. There was no forum. There was no marketplace. You couldn’t add a second blog to your account, you had to open two separate accounts. There wasn’t even a widget scanner to check and make sure you had the widget on your blog. There were no favorites, no comment integration, no recommendations on the profile, no RSS on your profile, no toolbar the list goes on and on and on. All you could do was buy ads, and approve/reject ads.

Little by little, we built and released features that you asked for, and features that we felt would help you succeed and would help your blogging efforts be fruitful. We built things we hoped would be fun and exciting for you. Our site has gone down at times, the data center housing our servers caught fire, amazon S3 crashed, and yet we persisted. We outgrew one server, then two, then three, at times scrambling to optimize our site’s architecture as the speed slowed to a crawl. When the dust settled, we were always still here, and so were you. Never once did our members abandon us in our hard times. You stuck it out with us, understood that everyone has ups, downs, and bumps in the road, and supported us the whole way.

Moving into year two

The rules for internet startups are changing. A lot of companies at our stage are being acquired, going out of business, or struggling desperately to get by. Amid the worst economic downturn of our time, funding has dried up in VC boardrooms. However, Entrecard will persist. Of this I am certain. There is too much left to do. Too much of the vision for Entrecard I’ve yet to achieve. Maybe I haven’t figured out all the particulars, but this is far from over. I’ve figured that out, at least.

In this second year of operation, you will have lots to look forward to. We’re going to re-release the shop with a feedback system, so anyone can sell anything for credits. This will help improve the economy and give you lots of options for spending your credits.

We will also be rolling out a credit exchange, so you can buy and sell credits from your dashboard in a more perfect supply-and-demand type of model. We want to help bloggers make money as well, and this will be a great move in that direction.

We still have some surprises up our sleeve, some more partnerships we’re working on, and a lot of great ideas to improve, expand, and grow. We hope that you and your blogs grow right along with us.

A new direction for the EC blog

Based on some of the recommendations made by our users, we decided to make a new overhaul of the Entrecard blog. Since we are a blogging network, and a hub for so much blogging related activity, we’ve decided that with the help of all the bloggers using Entrecard, we can be a truly unique resource for the worldwide blogging community. So, moving forward, the blog will cover the following topics:

- Blogging Industry News
- Making Money with your blogs
- Tips and Tricks to improve your blogs
- Entrecard News and Announcements (written my EC admins)

We need your help! Since the topics above covers a graet deal, we are asking everyone to blog for Entrecard. And now we’ve made it easier!

To blog for Entrecard:

We have created a global username and password so that ANYONE can log into the Entrecard blog at any time and write an article. It will then be reviewed by an editor who will check it over, edit as necessary, and publish. You can log in with the following information:

Username: Blogger

Password: entrecard

Login url: http://entrecard.com/blog/wp-admin

Blogging for Entrecard has some benefits and perks that come with it. You get to place your image at the top of your article, and link to your site. You get to establish a reputation and credibility among tens of thousands of other Entrecarders. And, of course, you’ll get extra visitors to your site.

Help bring Entrecard into the new year by blogging about any of the above mentioned topics, and we will randomly issue credit bounties for great articles!

What about contests?

We’re moving Entrecard Contests to their own forum, which you can find here. This is where announcements will be made, prizes will be gathered, ideas will be shared, and so forth. Contest updates will no longer be published on the blog.

This post has gotten long enough, so I just want to once again say thanks to everyone who has made Entrecard possible! You rock!

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